What does it take to make Ethereum better? According to its founders, it’s all about user experience. And he said on February 28th, Vitalik Buterin talked about the many problems with the Ethereum network that he needs to fix before he can truly solve the specific problem.
Vitalik explained on his blog that he faced many inconveniences due to high transaction fees while using the Ethereum network to process payments.
Vitalik’s ETH problems go back to 2021
Vitalik recalled that when he visited Argentina in 2021 and tried to pay for a cup of tea, he encountered an issue with an Ethereum payment. Surprisingly, no transaction of 0.003 ETH was accepted. Probably because he was below the exchange minimum deposit of 0.01 ETH.
Nevertheless, Vitalik decided to send the 0.007 ETH required to complete this transaction. This represented his overpayment of three times the price of the product, but he didn’t take the charge seriously and the user realized it was an error that he had to work on to improve their experience, so he dismissed it. I decided to just take it as a hint.
In 2022, he finds out things aren’t going to be much different. Vitalik tried to pay for the tea again elsewhere. This time he was unable to use his ETH due to gas charges. This was because the receiving contract “needed additional gas to process the transfer”, so the transaction did not go through.
These bad experiences helped him understand that “a simple and robust UI is better than a flashy and sophisticated UI.” He also learned that many users don’t even know the gas limit they need to process a transaction. So the default values should be improved.
Delayed payments can be frustrating for many users
Vitalik also complained about “an alarmingly long delay between my transactions”, as there is always suspicion of who should be held responsible if transactions are not confirmed promptly.
“A transaction can be approved in seconds, or it can take minutes or hours.”
The team has been working to remedy these issues with the EIP-1559 update, which should allow most transactions to be accepted in the next block, but “outliers still remain” He added that there is always the risk that it will not work perfectly.
For example, if many people trade at the same time, there is a risk that fees will skyrocket on the network and many trades will be rejected. This issue can cause even the most seasoned user significant financial loss as “his UI in the wallet is bad at showing this”.
Brave Wallet has deployed a workaround for this issue. The team listened to his suggestions and increased the maximum base rate from his 12.5% to his 33% and improved both the interface and user experience.
Buterin made his remarks, noting that many people, especially in southern countries, are opting for centralized solutions over decentralized alternatives because of how outdated applications are in terms of user experience. concluded.
While the Ethereum merge has helped reduce the average transaction processing time, many fixes are still needed to achieve the global adoption that crypto enthusiasts dream of.
